BBC takes cheap shot at local government

Strange BBC research, on the ‘cost of politics’ on today’s website.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the Beeb – it’s one of the great advantages of living in this country. In my native U.S.A. it’s poorer relative PBS just about gets by (usually by buying BBC programmes).

The research rather breathlessly reveals the cost of salaries for local councillors and assistants across the UK at £251 million out of nearly £500 million of the total 'cost of politicians.'

Predictably, this has sparked the usual spasms of hyperbole from the Taxpayers Alliance over the absolute sums involved.

But hang on, aren’t there several things wrong with this research?

Annoyingly, the BBC report doesn’t actually say what local government democracy does, it just says how much it spends.

This is kind of like me announcing that the BBC spent £3.4 billion pounds of taxpayers money a year, without mentioning it provides television, digital, radio, 24 hour news, a well-stocked cheese trolley for His Nibs, the Director-General, a website which went £36 million over budget in 2008 or even £110k of executives’ cars.

No, I’d think it would be quite unfair not to mention what it does, or to do so selectively.

Your typical council delivers about 250 services, from social care, through to transport works, schools, voluntary grants and community safety as well as a whole raft of enforcement measures. It sets strategic goals and negotiates with (unelected) quangos to deliver improvements. Camden, when I was Deputy Leader, was responsible for in excess of £900 million a year.

In 2008 local authorities across the UK were responsible for £155 billion in spend.

Most councillors I know spend at least 20 hours a week on their work with constituents, trying to get information from officers or scrutinising the delivery of services.

While local government has highly paid executives, like the BBC, the cost of democracy is very low compared to the overall spend: something like 0.16% of the entire budget of what local government does.

Of course, if you wanted to cut the cost of local politicians you could do so. It's just that the consequence of that would be the spending of public money by unelected quangos - like the BBC!

It should be remembered when taking a pop at councillors that unlike private sector corporate costs, MP expenses (or the BBC’s) all the information on the cost of councillors has been publicly available for some time now – published annually in local papers.

As I say, strange survey...